AWOL - Issue 019

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE » SPRING 2016 » ISSUE 019

UNAPOLOGETICALLY POWERFUL

THE "BITCH" IS BACK

+ SEARCHING FOR SANITY: Are jails the new asylums?

+ TRANSPORT TRAUMA: Investigating AU's alcohol climate

+ PERCEPTION INCEPTION: Muslim students threatened by stereotypes

17 UNAPOLOGETICALLY POWERFUL

THE "BITCH" IS BACK

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE » SPRING 2016 » ISSUE 019

"The people who called Dana Perino a bitch watched her from their couches as she addressed the nation from behind the White House podium. The people

MISSION AWOL is a progressive magazine run by American University students in Washington, DC. Founded in the spring of 2008 with support from Generation Progress, we are now an awardwinning publication funded by AU Student Media.

We exist to ignite campus discussion of social, cultural and political issues, and serve as an outpost for students to explore solutions to local and global problems. We hope to build bridges between American University and the world around it, ultimately making our campus more inquiring, egalitarian and socially engaged.

AWOL is not affiliated with any political party or ideology.

Our stories have an angle, which is different from having an agenda; our reporting is impartial and fair, but our analysis is critical and argumentative.

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF: Jess Anderson & Pamela Huber MANAGING EDITOR: Alex Mazzarisi ART DIRECTOR: Ellyse Stauffer WEB EDITOR: Rachel Falek

EDITORIAL STAFF EDITORS: Lydia Crouthamel, Antoinette D'Addario, Evie Lacroix, Andrea Lin, Ben Pitler, Laura Saini, Jessica Wombles COPY EDITORS: Lofaine Bradford, Will Fowler, Shayna Vayser

who called Gloria Steinem a bitch walk past her book in the windows of every major bookstore. The people who call Hillary Clinton a bitch continue to watch her campaign for President of the United States. "

—Shayna Vayser, p. 11

26 RESTRICTIONS CRAMP WOMENS' HEALTH CARE

TERMINATING ABORTION ACCESS

"The requirements that states are placing on medical facilities that provide abortions are ridiculous. You don't need hallways to be a certain width so that women can take two pills in your office."

—Paloma Losada, p. 09

WRITERS: Jess Anderson, D. Ashley Campbell, Antoinette D'Addario, Paloma Losada, Alex Mazzarisi, Thomas Pool, Laura Saini, Kim Szarmach,

AFFILIATIONS

Shayna Vayser

AWOL is a member of the Associated Collegiate Press, AU Student

ART

Media Board and Generation Progress’ Voices Network. The publica-

Olivia Donahue, Reina DuFore, Will Fowler, Pamela Huber, Robert Kennedy,

DESIGN ASSISTANT: Andrea Lin

tion has won awards at the National College Media Convention,

ILLUSTRATION & PHOTOGRAPHY: D. Ashley Campbell, Olivia Dono-

and its writers have won awards from the Society for Professional

hue, Gwynn Pollard, Mithila Samak

Journalists and the College Media Association.

LOVE A STORY? HATE A STORY? Want to join AWOL? Write to us: awolau@gmail.com

FIND US ONLINE BLOG: www.awolau.org TWITTER: @awolAU FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/awolAU

COVER ILLUSTRATION by Gwynn Pollard BACK COVER PHOTO by Olivia Donohue

RECLAIMING RIGHTS 09 RESTRICTIONS CRAMP WOMENS' HEALTH CARE TERMINATING ABORTION ACCESS

by Paloma Losada Virginia: one step forward, two steps back

11 UNAPOLOGETICALLY POWERFUL THE "BITCH" IS BACK

by Shayna Vayser B eing in charge - without the stigma

13 AFGHAN WOMEN WEAVE CULTURE RUGS AND RESILIENCE

by Alex Mazzarisi From their home to yours

CAMPUS LIFE 15 MUSLIM STUDENTS THREATENED BY STEREOTYPES PERCEPTION INCEPTION

by Antoinette D'Addario They come in sallam

17 IMMIGRANTS' BIGGEST BATTLE: TUITION UNDOCUMENTED AMERICA(N)

by Kim Szarmach Over the border, into the classroom

19 INVESTIGATING AU'S ALCOHOL CLIMATE TRANSPORT TRAUMA

by Will Fowler That extra shot may cost you...

21 PHOTO ESSAY DIGEST THIS.

by Olivia Donohue Starving for savings

AROUND TOWN BREAKING CHAINS 03 ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CHILD SOLDIERS LITTLE WEAPON

by Laura Saini How young is too old to know better?

05 EVALUATING REHABILITATION PROGRAMS EDUCATION FOR ASSIMILATION

by Robert Kennedy Prisons prevent criminal relapses

07 ARE JAILS THE NEW ASYLUMS? SEARCHING FOR SANITY

by Reina DuFore Prisoner or patient?

25 EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON FOOD SECURITY GROWING SCARCE

by Thomas Pool And that's the way the climate crumbles

28 A TEACHER WITH TENACITY EXPLAINING THE ABCs IN DC

by Jess Anderson How the other half learns

31 TWO CHURCHES, ONE LOVE BRIDGING THE DIVINE

by D. Ashley Campbell Jesus and (social) justice

33 THE NEW AMERICAN POET KYLE DARGAN

by Pamela Huber Pushing poetry in the District

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

The LRA stripped Ongwen of his childhood—he was taken at an age when morality and the ability to make decisions have not fully developed. The children are often forced to perform ritual killings in order to prove their loyalty, meaning that they kill their own mothers and fathers. All ties from their prior lives are cut out, making the LRA all they have left.

“Victims need some sort of closure and some kind of recognition that what was done shocks the conscience of humanity,” said Nikki Souris, a professor at American University whose research examines the relation between moral development and criminal responsibility. “The victims and the victim’s families want Ongwen to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Ongwen was commander during some of the LRA’s most vicious attacks. According to a Human Rights Watch report, troops under Ongwen’s command killed at least 345 civilians and abducted another 250, including at least 80 children, during a four-day rampage in the Makombo area of northeastern Congo.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently trying Ongwen, now 41, for the crimes he committed since he turned 18—though some question whether Ongwen should receive leniency given the horrible circumstances he faced.

Author Erin Baines described Ongwen’s situation in her work on perpetrators of political crimes.

PIERRE HOLTZ / UNICEF CAR / CC BY-SA

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CHILD SOLDIERS

LITTLE WEAPON

By Laura Saini

At ten years old, Dominic Ongwen was walking his typical route to school in Gula, northern Uganda. On his way, he was kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA forced him to leave his family and become a part of an army responsible for recruiting hundreds of thousands of young kids like himself.

In the army, he became a major at the age of 18 and eventually second-in-command to Joseph Kony, the leader of the LRA. The LRA is associated with brutal massacres, summary executions, torture, rape, pillage and forced labor. Ongwen was a young boy introduced to these circumstances, but he eventually grew from being the victim to the perpetrator.

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“Ongwen is like a dog sent to get meat," she said. "They made him fight against his own people so that he is not able to return home and live with the people he hurt. He just worked on order and became a leader because of his discipline in following orders. We are like dogs because as the dog grows, it follows what it sees."

While the LRA formed in Uganda before spreading to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan, it is not the only army in Africa who enlists child soldiers. Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Libya, Mali, Chad, Uganda, Liberia, Congo, and Mozambique are only some of the countries across Africa that kidnap and recruit children with paramilitary organizations. Children are easier to manipulate than adults, making them prime targets for these armies.

For Thomas Squitieri, former foreign correspondent for USA Today, witnessing child soldiers firsthand in Liberia put that idea into perspective.

“The experience was shocking because I could not believe children so young would not be playing soldiers, but actually being soldiers,” Squitieri said. “I don’t think they realized the difference.”

Squitieri witnessed many horrifying acts as a war correspondent, but the child soldiers he encountered were deeply troubling to him. Fanaticism troubles him, he said, and these soldiers were fanatic about doing whatever their leader told them to do.

BREAKING CHAINS "When they were in the LRA, they were something. They were commanders, they had freedom. They could loot and take what they want, when they want. They were their own masters."

“These young boys were looking up to their leader as almost like a messiah, a cult leader,” Squitieri said.

Child soldiers are not exclusive to Africa either. Today, ISIS actively indoctrinates children, taking over local education systems and teaching young children that God wants them to join ISIS and fight for their cause.

According to another Human Rights Report, ISIS offers free schooling in Syria, along with military training and weapons, essentially creating a generation of fighters for ISIS. Also, ISIS often exploits children with mental disablities, convincing them to volunteer for suicide missions.

The U.K., the U.S., China, India, the Netherlands, Canada, France, New Zealand, Germany and Australia allow minors in the national armed forces, although usually under very strict conditions, according to author and child soldier expert Mark Drumbl.

"Many U.S. volunteer soldiers actually fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are barely over the age of eighteen...They are not child soldiers and, hence, are not a protected class. But, still, when tragedy strikes they are often referred to as 'just kids,'" Drumbl said.

A lot of children also volunteer to join the LRA and ISIS. Some like the power they get when joining these armies. Kasper Agger, a member of the non-profit organization Enough Project, which focuses on ending crimes against humanity in Sudan, Congo and Uganda, offered his perception of how ex-combatants felt before and after leaving the LRA. “When they were in the LRA, they were something,” Agger said. “They were commanders, they had freedom. They could loot and take what they want, when they want. They were their own masters.”

For some children, these armies provide an escape from the poverty they usually face. Children have different experiences depending on where they grew up. At 15, people in Uganda are usually already married and working. At 15, they are considered to be adults who must care for their families and put food on the table.

In the U.S., 15-year-olds are still freshmen in high school. Because of these different experiences, it’s hard to create an international law that says what age children officially become adults.

Once children become adults, they become criminally responsible for their actions.

To say people can make rational decisions on their 15th or 18th birthday draws a firm legal line between childhood to adulthood.

Psychologically, this may not be reflected. According to a study

conducted by the National Institute of Health, areas of the brain affecting decision-making do not fully mature until people are well into their 20s.

The ICC holds people responsible for crimes committed at the age of 18 and above. Other courts will hold child soldiers responsible for crimes committed before age 15. Because of this discrepancy, there is a push for a “Straight 18” position, which will make all courts hold child soldiers accountable for crime committed at 18 years or older.

This would apply everywhere, which helps create stability and fairness in the justice system. However, it could also ignore the different circumstances children face depending on where they live.

In Uganda, the courts gave child soldiers amnesty if they left the LRA, meaning they were not punished for any crimes. According to a Human Rights Watch report, the Ugandan government gave more than 12, 906 people affiliated with the LRA amnesty as of 2012.

“Everyone knows someone who was with the LRA at some point, most of them against their will,” Agger said. “Persecution is not the answer that people seem to be looking for, but maybe compensation and the government recognizing some of the atrocities they were behind…I think that matters more than punishment.”

The Ugandan government also did not follow through with a lot of the promises given to returning child soldiers to make their transition back to the community as easy as possible. While most children are happy to be free from the LRA, others express frustration.

“Some child soldiers even say if they had the chance, they would go back to the LRA," Agger said. "When you are in a rebel group, you have an objective, a purpose."

According to a report by Human Trafficking Center, the Ugandan government did enact a Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration policy for returning soldiers, but there wasn’t much organization in the program, so the government relied primarily on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to run it. Most NGOs pulled out of Uganda after 2006, when the conflict seemed to die down. This provided short term relief, but in the long term it left many ex-combatants feeling betrayed.

“They found themselves sitting in a small village in northern Uganda, surviving on one meal a day, not being able to go to school, no job,” Agger said. “They really don’t have a future.”

As for Ongwen, there is still debate about whether he should be given leniency for his actions committed at 18 and above.

“I think we have instincts for excusing those who have been through really horrible circumstances,” Souris said. “But we also have instincts for saying you should know better since you were a victim of these circumstances.”

Laura Saini is a junior studying law and journalism. She is a staff editor for AWOL. WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

EVALUATING REHABILITATION PROGRAMS

EDUCATION FOR ASSIMILATION

By Robert Kennedy // Infographics by Ellyse Stauffer

When people think of life in prison, many imagine the world portrayed in movies and television series such as Orange Is the New Black. Though fictional, this show is inspired by the real life experiences of convicted felon Piper Kerman.

“When I was locked up in Danbury [Federal Correctional Institution], I knew women who were trying to raise their children during brief reunions in the visitors’ room while fending off sexual harassment and struggling with addiction and trying to get a high school education, so that when they got out they stood some chance of surviving despite their felony conviction,” Kerman said in a 2014 speech to the United States Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Life after prison is very difficult to adjust to for ex-prisoners like Kerman, and though there are some programs in place to help assist them, many who have been through the criminal justice system say that it is not enough.

Unfortunately, the former inmates Kerman speaks about are often released into a world where they face the same socioeconomic factors that led them to commit a crime in

the first place. In addition to these prexisting issues, having a felony on record makes people ineligible for welfare, student loans, public housing and food stamps in many states, according to the Office of Legislative Research in Connecticut. Not only that, but having a criminal record plastered on every job application can often deter people from getting the jobs they need. Nothing sends a job application to the trash faster than a criminal record.

This is the adverse situation that many prisoners face when they are released from jail, but one type of program implemented in some correctional facilities across the United States aims to break this cycle by preparing inmates for the productive lives in society that they desire—higher education rehabilitation. As Kerman stated, education can serve as the solution for prisoners to stand “some chance of surviving despite their felony conviction” and reduce the recidivism rate, or the rate at which prisoners return to jail after release.

“The higher an inmate’s education, the lower their recidivism rate is,” said Roger Meyer, the deputy director of rehabilitative programs at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in California. “Studies have shown that inmates who participate in programs have lower recidivism than those that don’t participate in programs… thereby actually increasing community safety and reducing the cost of imprisonment.”

Reducing recidivism is the end goal of rehabilitation programs. Unlike the common practice of simply incarcerating people for a set amount of time, rehabilitation offers an alternative approach that many professionals in the prison industry today find appealing.

“These are human beings that may not have had the same chances we’ve had,” said Dianne Stone, a former Cook County Illinois corrections employee. “And just like dogs in the kill shelter, they’re being adopted. No longer do we just kill them.

If they have proven themselves to have changed and learned something, they deserve a chance. But so many go back to a life of crime because they never got that second chance.”

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. contains only five percent of the world’s population, but holds 25 percent of its prisoners. This makes the rate of incarceration in the U.S higher than any other country in the world, with 724 people imprisoned per 100,000, according to the BBC World Prison Population Report.

To put that into perspective, Pew Charitable Trusts reported

58 percent of those released from prison end up going back to correctional facilities within 10 years.

The overall odds of recidivating among inmates recieving correctional education are 64 percent of the odds of recidivataing among inmates not receiving correctional education.

Source: Bureau of Justice, Rand Corporation

5

BREAKING CHAINS

Odds of Recidivating by Educational Program Type Average odds of recidivating General Education Development (GED) Adult Basic Education (ABE) Career and Technical Education (CTE) Postsecondary Education (PSE) Source: Rand Corporation

that one in every 31 Americans are either in prison, on probation or on parole. And of those released from prison, 58 percent end up going back to correctional facilities within 10 years, according to a 2014 report from the Bureau of Justice.

In an effort to address this, researchers have been trying to find ways to reduce recidivism by focusing their attention on higher education rehabilitation as a solution.

The goal of in-prison higher education is to teach inmates how to think critically and be prepared for the job market upon their release.

“Education is clearly the way to a better life,” Stone said. “Education helps them fill out job forms. If they say they have a GED and some college credits, [they] definitely have three steps ahead. Any education is better than none.”

These sentiments are shared throughout the field of corrections.

“Not only does education help inmates when they are released from prison back into society, but it’s also good for the economy and it saves taxpayers money,” Michelle Ribeiro, a retired education director at the New Mexico Corrections Department, said in an interview with Arizona State University’s online newspaper, ASU Now. Preparing for a job and honing critical thinking skills are crucial steps to avoid the prison cycle. However, some are critical of inmate education. The editorial board members of Syracuse newspaper the Daily Orange, for example, argue that affording higher education is a problem that many people, not just inmates, face.

“It is not fair to give inmates access to higher education when there are law-abiding citizens who work hard to earn the grades required to be admitted to college that cannot attend a college or the college of their choosing because of financial issues,” the authors state.

Though there is a price tag to educating prisoners, the return on this investment has proved to pay off in the long run.

According to Meyer, every dollar spent on rehabilitative programming saves anywhere between $2.50 and $11 for social services. Since education reduces recidivism, taxpayer money that would have funded future incarceration is instead saved for other purposes.

Studies also indicate that by offering education for prisoners, correctional facilities are accomplishing three goals: saving money for the taxpayer, keeping prisoners from returning for other crimes and preparing former inmates for life on the outside again.

“The United States has proven that you can’t incarcerate and expect things to change,” Meyer said.

He’s not alone in this belief. Organizations across the country are advocating for educating prisoners as a solution to America’s massive incarceration rate. In March of this year, students at ASU organized the 5th annual ASU Prison Education Conference, which featured a variety of guest speakers and talks highlighting the importance of education for inmates.

The event, organized by the student-run Prison Education Awareness Club (PEAC) and the Department of English, hoped to raise awareness on the topic while promoting current programs in place for prisoners—for example, the university offers a program known as the Pen Project, a writing class connecting maximum-security and other incarcerated writers with student interns in the Department of English, who provide feedback on their work.

Efforts like the Pen Project, mixed with the push for prison education policy on both a local and national scale, have begun to change the mindset of American incarceration practices.

“Political positions on prison education shift like the wind, and we’re coming out of an incapacitation and punishment model and realizing again [that] there’s a direct relationship between education and recidivism,” Ribeiro said.

More importantly, eduation programs have real impacts on the lives of returning inmates.

“I have worked with many women and men who are returned citizens like me,” Kerman told the Senate. “And we all want to get back on out feet, to reclaim our rights of citizenship and to make positive contributions to our communities.”

Robert Kennedy is a sophomore studying CLEG.

WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

6

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

ARE JAILS THE NEW ASYLUMS?

SEARCHING FOR SANITY

By Reina DuFore // Infographic by Ellyse Stauffer

Jamycheal Mitchell was a 24-year-old who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and mood disorders. He died of starvation on August 19, 2015 after being neglected in a Virginia jail cell, having waited four months for a hospital bed to open up in a state mental hospital.

The systematic failure of mental healthcare within the United States has left those with mental illnesses without a bed in a proper mental health facility and free entry into what has become the new major asylum: prison.

According to Mental Health America, 20.1 percent of adults with mental health illnesses reported that they are unable to get the help that they need. Out of the approximately 7.9 million U.S. adults with a mental illness, about 1.6 million of them go without treatment. The Inspector General for Behavioral Health and Developmental Services in Virginia released a report in 2011 stating that approximately 200 individuals determined to pose a threat to themselves or others were turned away from mental health facilities because there were no beds available.

“If a person has inadequate resources, meaning insurance or financial means, it’s a very dicey system—a hit or miss,” said Eric Kothari, American University’s psychologist in residence. “If you’re of limited means, it’s almost nonexistent.”

Approximately 20 percent of inmates in jails and 15 percent of inmates in state prisons have a serious mental illness (SMI), according to the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), totaling nearly 356,000 people. On average, state hospitals only house 35,000 individuals with SMIs at a time, meaning there are currently 10 times more people with SMIs found in jails and prisons than in state-run mental facilities.

Howard Zonana, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, explained that there is a major time lag between when those with SMIs begin to need treatment and begin to receive treatment.

“People who develop major psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia often don’t get to treatment until after they’re symptomatic for two years,” Zonana said. “If they get treatment earlier, they tend to do better.”

This delay in treatment can lead to dangerous behavior, such as violent crime. TAC reports that approximately 1,000 homicides

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among the estimated 20,000 total homicides in the U.S. are committed each year by people with untreated schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Additionally, people with untreated psychiatric illnesses spend twice as much time in jail as those without mental illnesses, and are more likely to commit suicide. *** The decline of mental health care access for those diagnosed with a mental illness began in the 1960s with deinstitutionalization—the policy of moving people with mental illnesses out of state institutions and then permanently closing those institutions in an attempt to move individuals with mental health needs to community-based mental health treatment programs. However, there was little to no success in community-based mental health institutions due to poor funding and attention. Today, the same problems persist.

One TAC study found that in 1955, there was one psychiatric bed for every 300 Americans. In 2005, there was one psychiatric bed for every 3,000 Americans.

“I don’t think anybody currently believes that long term, lifelong hospitalization was a great solution,” Zonana said. “On the other hand, there are a number of people who have great difficulties surviving out in the community without major supports—the illness just intrudes so much, and there’s not so much control.”

Today, only those with sufficient financial means have access to proper mental health treatment.

“There is a tremendous difference between if you’re upwardly mobile and you have insurance, or if you’re poor, lack insurance, lack financial means and [therefore] lack access to good care,” Kothari said. “Lots of times in prison systems, you’ll see lots of individuals who come from poor neighborhoods.”

The American Psychological Association found that African Americans are just as much at risk for mental illness as their white peers, yet receive substantially less treatment. U.S. Census Bureau data show that in 2005, African Americans were 7.3 times more likely to live in high-poverty neighborhoods with limited or no access to mental health services, leaving many adults untreated.

“If we spend more funds on mental health services in the community, those that have mental illnesses will have better access to the services they need, ” said Nicole Johnson, director of forensic services in the District of Columbia’s Department of Behavioral Health. “They will be able to get treatment instead of just being funneled through the criminal justice system.”

Further research from TAC indicated a very strong correlation between states that have more mentally ill persons in the correctional system and states that spend relatively less money on mental health services.

“A lot of people with mental health illnesses are being arrested for minor charges,” Johnson said. “People need to be educated on the difference between whether someone needs to be imprisoned or whether that individual needs treatment.” ***

BREAKING CHAINS Despite high demand, prisons are unable to provide those with mental illnesses the help that they need due to a lack of equipment and manpower. “[Prisons] are supposed to provide adequate care, so you can’t be deliberately indifferent to the mental health needs of prisoners,” Zonana said. “But there is still is a gap between what people can get and where.”

One survey from the U.S. Department of Justice reports that 22 out of 40 state correctional systems did not have an adequate mental health staff. Because of this, 83 percent of jail inmates reported that they did not have access to needed treatment.

Kothari witnessed firsthand the poor mental health care available in Maryland.

“Once a month the psychiatrist would come in,” he said of one prison that he visited. “He was contracted to come in one day a month for two hours. He would sit at a desk, like this.

The men would line up—there would be a line snaked for 150 yards. And he saw as many people as he could see. And I mean, literally, you had 30 seconds with the guy. That was psychiatric services. Whoever got to see him saw him, and whoever didn’t— too bad.”

Currently, 44 out of the 50 states and the District have at least one prison or jail that is holding more individuals with a serious mental illness than that state’s largest mental facility, according to TAC. The overcrowding of those who need mental health care in prisons diminishes already scarce resources.

“Most correctional facilities aren’t accredited because they don’t meet the standards,” Zonana said. “So the amount and quantity of available treatments can be quite low.”

The effects of overcrowding those with mental health needs in prisons became apparent in the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown vs. Plata, which determined that the overcrowding prisoners faced in California amounted to cruel and unusual treatment.

Forty-five percent of prisoners in California are mentally ill, and this number has doubled since 2000, according to a study by Stanford Law. Once in prison, they receive little to no treatment; overcrowding only worsened this problem.

“Even though they were diagnosing people appropriately, they weren’t able to move to the appropriate level of care,” Zonana said. “They were often just held at the same place for over a year because [prisons] were so overcrowded.”

State and Federal Correctional Institution Population Public Mental Facility Population 1,053,738

558,239 185,780

1955

71,619

1994 Source: Bureau of Justice, PBS

ternal stimuli, hallucinations, panic attacks, cognitive deficits, obsessive thinking, paranoia and a litany of other physical and psychological problems.”

For people who are already suffering from a mental illness, solitary confinement may be life-threatening. In 2009, Anthony Gay was arrested in Illinois on a minor probation violation charge. After consecutive disturbances of throwing urine and feces, prison staff moved him to solitary confinement. There, he began self-mutilating—cutting parts of his arms, legs, and genitalia with pieces of metal or broken glass found within his jail cell. However, instead of treatment or psychiatric evaluation, he received more time in solitary confinement—a total of 97 years.

Gay isn’t the only one. Between half and three-quarters of prison inmates in solitary confinement are mentally ill, and one-third engage in cutting or other forms of self-mutilation, according to The Real Cost Weblog. The National Crime Information Center estimates that more than 90 percent of suicides in the correctional system are associated with mental or addictive disorders and that approximately two-thirds of individuals who commit suicide are depressed at the time of their deaths.

Kothari explained how he views the correctional system’s ideology towards prisoners.

“If you break the law, you deserve to be punished,” he said.

“And that means, we [the prison system] don’t owe you much...If you chose to participate lawfully then you gain society’s blessing, but if you don’t, you incur society’s punishment. So you’re no longer treated as an individual with rights.”

***

Though Kothari does not share this ideology, he recognizes that it is embedded in the system.

The overall state of prisons, in conjunction with poor mental health care within prisons, has only shown to exacerbate preexisting mental illnesses and lead to an increase in suicide rates.

“Prison is not about rehabilitation or care,” he said. “It’s merely about warehousing. This is the state of the prison system.”

Harvard psychiatrist Stuart Grassian conducted interviews of the inmates sentenced to solitary confinement at the Pelican Bay State Prison. He found that “solitary confinement induces a psychiatric disorder characterized by hypersensitivity to ex-

Reina DuFore is a freshman studying international development and economics.

WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

8

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

RESTRICTIONS CRAMP WOMENS' HEALTH CARE

TERMINATING ABORTION ACCESS

By Paloma Losada // Photo by Gwynn Pollard

The debate over reproductive rights continues along party lines in state legislatures across the country. In the Virginia State Legislature, measures to restrict access to late-term abortions failed to pass, but House Republicans promise that the fight is far from over.

Dave LaRock (R-Loudoun County) is a passionate supporter of pro-life policy and believes that members of both parties can come together on the issue of abortion access. He believes that the abortion debate lacks educated discussion of abortion procedures and the humanity of fetuses.

“The biggest obstacle is that the procedure that I’m talking about,

saline abortion, is not well known to the public,” says LaRock.

Saline abortions are performed at 16 weeks of gestation by injecting saline into the amniotic sac, which induces uterine contractions that expel the fetus. As of 2003, saline abortions make up less than 1 percent of all abortion procedures conducted in the United States, according to Guttmacher Institute.

“I’ve had someone comment to me, ‘If I were to describe what takes place to this baby and say would you treat a person in a prison camp, or Guantanamo Bay, would you subject them to mercy or would you stretch them apart and dismember them?’ We’d all be on the same side at that,” LaRock said.

“In practice, no federal funds can go towards abortion. In de-funding Planned Parenthood, women and men in medically underserved communities are blocked from getting basic preventative health care, STD testing and cancer screenings.”

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In regard to third-trimester abortions, LaRock said that if the public was made aware of “the biological reality that we are dealing with an almost fully formed human being," more and more people would identify as pro-life.

Third-trimester abortions are relatively uncommon, with 90 percent of all abortions occuring in the first trimester of pregnancy, according to Columbia University’s

RECLAIMING RIGHTS

Mailman School of Public Health.

But for LaRock, the issue is about the life of the fetus, not reproductive rights.

“I’m not really in a position to comment on the ideology of women’s rights versus other rights,” he said. “I think those topics have been debated extensively.”

He asserts that education will allow individuals to make more “informed” and “compassionate” judgments on the “inhuman procedure.”

"The requirements that states are placing on medical facilities that provide abortions are just not necessary. You don't need to have your hallways be a certain width so that women can take two pills in your office."

Pro-choice activists similarly argue that the public is undereducated when it comes to abortion. Those in support of pro-choice policy have accused those in the pro-life community of purposefully spreading misinformation about abortion procedures, sexual and female health and pro-choice organizations.

The main target of pro-life politicians and activists is Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of reproductive and sexual health care in the U.S. Michelle Woods, the public and legislative manager at Planned Parenthood of Metro Washington, explains that when politicians talk about de-funding Planned Parenthood, more is at stake than the access to abortions.

According to Planned Parenthood’s 2013-2014 Annual Report, abortions account for 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services.

Forty-two percent of services are focused on STD/STI testing and treatment, 34 percent go toward providing birth control, nine percent to cancer screenings, 11 percent for other women’s services and one percent are for other general services.

Though some pro-life Americans do not want any of their tax dollars to go towards providing any abortions that are not a result of incest, rape or endangerment to the life of the mother, Woods explains that these individuals don’t need to worry.

“Something that isn’t talked about is the Hyde Amendment,” Woods said. “In practice, no federal funds can go towards abortion.

In de-funding Planned Parenthood, women and men in medically underserved communities are blocked from getting basic preventative health care, STD testing and cancer screenings.”

The Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976 and confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1980, is a “rider,” or legislative provision that is attached to bills when the subject matter is considered too controversial or weak to pass as its own bill.

The amendment has been attached to the congressional appropriations bill and approved by Congress every year since. This forbids federal funds from being utilized to finance abortions except in the cases of incest, rape or endangerment to the life of the mother. The decision to fund abortions is left to the states. Woods said that in Virginia, no public funding goes towards abortions.

Currently, the most successful abortion regulation occurs indirectly through TRAP laws. TRAP laws, or Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, are regulations placed on abortion-providing clinics themselves. The ultimate goal of TRAP laws is to drive clinics out of business by making abortion care too expensive to provide.

Examples of TRAP laws include facility modifications that have no impact on the health of patients, demanding physicians to have admitting privileges at the nearest hospital or imposing staffing requirements. According to a Bloomberg analysis, since 2011, 162 abortion clinics have closed due to TRAP laws. A third of those clinics were operated by Planned Parenthood. “[TRAP laws] treat the provision of abortions differently than other medical procedures,” said Jessica Waters, associate dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University. “The requirements that states are placing on medical facilities that provide abortions are just not necessary. You don’t need to have your hallways be a certain width so that women can take two pills in your office.”

State policy makers resort to TRAP laws because direct regulation of abortion is more difficult.

“We’ve seen around the country that states are trying to put a cutoff on when abortion procedures can be performed,” Waters said.

The Supreme Court declared in the landamrk case Roe v. Wade that a fetus is not a person under the 14th Amendment. Therefore, abortion regulation based on the argument that life begins at conception have no legal value. But with 44 percent of people still identifying as pro-life, according to one Gallup poll, it is clear that debate over abortion regulations will have a continued presence in state legislatures across the country.

“Some are putting [abortions] at the point of fetal viability, when the fetus can live outside the women with or without medical intervention,” Waters said. “Some states are pushing it even earlier, trying to block abortions at the moment of conception. But these laws are often challenged immediately because they seem to not [keep] with what the courts said in Roe and Casey.”

Despite the TRAP laws and pro-life efforts in the legislature, Woods remains hopeful for the future of abortion providers, particularly Planned Parenthood, in the U.S. “The overwhelming majority agree to support Planned Parenthood,” Woods said. “More than six national polls have shown that voters stand with Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is here to stay.”

Paloma Losada is a freshman studying international relations.

WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

UNAPOLOGETICALLY POWERFUL

THE "BITCH" IS BACK

By Shayna Vayser // Illustration by Gwynn Pollard

In 2007, Dana Perino made history. For the first time, the face of the White House sported a cropped blonde bob and kitten heels. Perino was the first female republican White House Press Secretary, where she served under former President George W. Bush.

The story of her journey from there to her current position as a political pundit for Fox’s “The Five” is one Perino tries to share with younger generations. She does this through Minute Mentoring, an organization she created in order to connect young women with professional executives in politics, finance and media.

“It’s like professional speed dating,” Perino said. “I don’t have a monopoly on great advice.”

There is a growing network of professional women like Perino seek-

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ing to encourage younger generations to consider a range of careers typically dominated by men.

Michelle Cove, executive director of MEDIAGIRLS, has found that being a source of inspiration is simple.

“I think it comes down to giving [girls] the tools and skills to practice speaking up and sharing their ideas, even when others disagree,” she said.

With organizations like MEDIAGIRLS attempting to remove gender barriers in the workforce, a major inhibiting factor is the reactions of peers to assertive women. These reactions trail all the way from the boardroom back to girls’ childhoods.

“I was being bossy and Jake So-and-So called me a crazy bitch,” said Melissa Miller, a freshman at American University. She laughs when she thinks about how she cried after hearing the insult as a sixth

RECLAIMING RIGHTS grader. Still, the incident had an impact.

“I became a lot shyer,” she said. “I was more hesitant about speaking out in class.”

Miller’s experience is not unique. In an independent study conducted among 515 AU students, 89 percent reported that they had been referred to as a bitch at least once in their life.

Of that group, 80 percent identified as female.

"People are still trying to figure out how women in public office can be assertive and aggressive with their ideas without sounding shrill or yelling."

Tazreena Sajjad, a professor in the AU Global Governance, Politics and Security Program, considers the use of the word to be an effective tool in discouraging individuals to be fully forthcoming.

“It is a silencing technique,” Sajjad said. “We also use it to describe men who we associate with effeminate characteristics. It’s disempowering to all genders.”

ual woman with typical family structure,” Guzman said. “Her privilege has blinded her from seeing that not everyone has had the opportunities that she has.”

Schaeffer does, however, acknowledge potential problems concerning the language used to reference women in a professional environment.

Sajjad explained that the word is used to criticize a woman showing strength, as well as men who fail to meet standards of perceived

“People are still trying to figure out how women in public office can be assertive and aggressive with their ideas without sounding shrill

masculinity. According to Sajjad, these criticisms represent how society constructs gender.

or yelling,” she said.

“Representations of gender can be very nuanced or overt, but are part of every way we engage with concepts of identity or the commodification of the human body,” Sajjad said. “That’s the role the media plays.”

“For a woman to play as an equal in a field, she is required to play by the rules established by men, for men,” she said.

Many turn to the public forum to understand how media and advocacy networks like MEDIAGIRLS interact. Here, political pundits, like the executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum Sabrina Schaeffer, have the opportunity to comment on the limitations and benefits of gender roles.

When Schaeffer visited AU in February, she advocated for her doctrine of conservative feminism, preserving gender roles and recognizing “inherent differences” between men and women.

Schaeffer questioned how the media covers and sensationalizes workplace discrimination.

“I can think of one instance when I worked on the Hill where I was met with someone who just wasn’t very nice and wasn’t very thoughtful in the words he chose to use,” Schaeffer said. “I think those are instances where you can speak up if it’s worth it to you. I think you have to look at the big picture. Is it really limiting your opportunities, keeping you from getting what you want professionally or personally? Or is it an inconvenience?”

Schaeffer believes that many instances of perceived inequity for women are isolated events.

“There’s just nothing systematic about it, I suppose,” she said. “There are just better and worse people out there. I’ve probably been called a bitch, but I would hope that those words are reserved for when someone cuts you off in traffic.”

Schaffer advocates for ending the “victimhood narrative” of women who campaign for workplace equality. Yet, some have criticized her conservative feminism as a non-inclusive subset of the larger feminist movement.

Jeffery Guzman, a freshman at AU, found Schaeffer’s definition of feminism to be finite.

“Her message is limited to her own experience as a white heterosex-

Sajjad agrees.

Not everyone agrees that learning to play by the rules requires conceding one’s values or sense of self.

“Learn to adapt without compromising who you are,” advised Andrea Agathoklis, an AU alumna and anti-trust lawyer at a recent Women in Leadership Alumni Panel.

Fellow panelist Mariana Fanning, a business executive whose career developed in the late 1960s, mirrored Agathoklis’ encouragement.

“Think big and do not be afraid of failure,” Fanning said. “Nobody saw me as doing everything I did—I just worked like hell. Eventually they backed off and let me work.”

While politicians, pundits and activists may vary in how much they stress the presence of gender discrimination, most consistently stress the importance of utilizing professional outreach to compel young women to put their foot in the door.

“I can learn as much from [students] are they learn from me,” Cove said. “Young women who understand their value and how to advocate for themselves are more likely to pursue whatever career interests them.”

Perino also wants all young professionals to recognize that being a woman “is not a hindrance.” She believes it is essential to turn toward other exemplary female figures. One of Perino’s role models is Holly Probes, her former chief of staff on Capitol Hill “She could write, think well and argue persuasively while being dignified and gracious,” Perino said. “She stood up straight and all of the congressmen would always listen to her, whatever she said. I immediately thought, ‘Oh. I like her.’”

Engaging female youth is widely considered an important first step in combatting the lack of representation of women in politics and media. Some say there are enough female executives in varying fields, but a list of a few names of female CEOs cannot combat the New York Times statistic that there are more men named John running large

WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

companies in the U.S. than there are women in the same positions.

Furthermore, less than 20 percent of Congress is comprised of women, and only 31 percent of them are women of color, while nearly 40 percent of all women in the U.S. do not identify as Caucasian.

“Change never comes easily,” Sajjad said. “You have to keep pushing that rock up the hill. Always. It’s a big responsibility, but we have to take it on.”

AFGHAN WOMEN WEAVE CULTURE

RUGS & RESILIENCE

By Alex Mazzarisi

Sajjad believes it is essential to acknowledge the privileges certain women have so that society can subsequently use those resources to move towards equality.

Donna Brazile, vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and AU’s Wonk of the Year, has dedicated her life to executing this.

“I’m not wounded by my experiences of dealing with racism or sexism, or any of the other ‘isms,’” she said. “My struggle was about making sure that I could open doors for others to come through.”

While Perino believes that using the word “bitch” only signifies the inability to express oneself in more eloquent terms, Sajjad notes that some attempt to redefine the term “bitch” to evoke strength and brilliance.

It is an effort that is not limited to binary perceptions of gender, age or race. For Sajjad, this initiative signifies an effort to end the notion that an individual’s identity should be compromised for fear of judgement.

“A bitch is a mother dog,” Sajjad said. “A mother dog reproduces like any mammal and has puppies. Why is that inherently problematic in and of itself?”

The people who called Dana Perino a bitch watched her from their couches as she addressed the nation from behind the White House podium. The people who called Gloria Steinem a bitch walk past her book in the windows of every major bookstore. The people who call Hillary Clinton a bitch continue to watch her campaign for President of the United States.

In a 2008 episode of Saturday Night Live, comedians Amy Poehler and Tina Fey recognized this in their segment.

“People say that Hillary is a bitch,” Fey said. “And let me say something about that. Yeah. She is. And so am I. And so is this one”—she pointed to Poehler—“Bitches get stuff done. Bitch is the new black!”

For Brazile, it comes down to women understanding their power.

“If you are bossy, wear it,” she said. “Be the boss of your future; be the boss of your country.”

Shayna Vayser is a freshman studying international relations and communications.

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As the sun set behind the McKinley building, students, professors and various visitors file into the New Media Center. Seated atop tasseled pillows and clad in multicolored clothing, a man and woman begin to play traditional Afghan music to a mesmerized crowd. They are the opening entertainment for a panel discussion about the untold stories of women in Afghanistan.

At the center of this discussion is James Opie, who is not in the New Media Center but across the country. Opie is the creator of the Afghan Rug Project, which he launched in 2006, 36 years after opening his retail rug store in Portland, Ore. Opie, now approaching his 46th year in the Oriental rug business, traveled extensively through the Middle East in the 1970s, increasingly attracted to the beauty of Islamic architecture and a portable feature of this culture: handmade rugs.

“The attraction I felt was a bit like romantic love, but this love focused on something more enormous and historically anchored than individual humans can ever be,” Opie says. “The more I learned, the more I wished to learn.”

At the time, Opie considered Afghanistan to be the “freest and most welcoming nation in the world.” But as the decades passed, unrest erupted in the country after the Soviet Invasion in 1979, disrupting life in the Middle East and Central Asia and uprooting lives.

Poverty and unemployment plagued Afghanistan, forcing millions of people to move to Pakistan or Iran as refugees. It is estimated that more than 1 million civilians were killed in the nine-year conflict, according to journalist Alan Taylor’s article in the Atlantic. Similar to the way unrest in Syria has led to the rise of ISIS, the Taliban preyed on many orphaned Afghan children, brainwashing them with fundamentalist rhetoric. Today, research from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University names Afghanistan as the world’s top producer of refugees for the 32nd year in a row, with an additional 700,000 displaced persons struggling to survive within the country’s borders.

Opie argues that stability in Afghanistan is vital for sustaining their nation and culture, but is also essential for maintaining security in other parts of the world. He believes that if Afghanistan falls to destructive forces like ISIS, the entire region will remain uncontrollable for decades to come.

RECLAIMING RIGHTS

“One challenge, clearer now than it was a decade ago, is that our government can never spend enough in Afghanistan to make a real difference," Opie says. “The difference needed can only come through more reliable patterns of exchange, exchanges between homes and families in Afghanistan to homes and families here.”

And so instead of donating money, Opie created the Afghan Rug Project.

Many of Opie’s rugs are imported from rural, Taliban-controlled areas, where home-based employment is critical, particularly for women. Most women cannot leave their homes without being escorted by a male relative, meaning that they especially benefit from the project, which allows them to support themselves and their families in the safety of their homes, close to their children.

And because weaving is so historically and culturally ingrained in Afghan society, the Taliban do not interfere with it.

Although the Taliban is no longer the dominant power in Afghanistan, its influence and lingering presence still haunts the country today. “[In Afghanistan] insecurity and continuation of various forms of violence continue to be a threat to women,” says Shahla Ahmadi, president and founder of the Afghan-American Women’s Association, who spoke at Opie’s panel. Her organization helps newly arrived Afghan women adjust to American culture. Ahmadi, who was born in Afghanistan but left in the 1980s, sees Opie’s project as a way of connecting Afghan women with the rest of the world, ultimately bringing stability to the country.

“It’s important to have a relationship with those in the community surrounding the work,” she says.

“Only with sustainable programs can we bring real and lasting change in the life of aid recipients.”

Photo courtesy of James Opie

Fatima works on a rug for the Afghan Rug Project in Mazar, Afghanistan.

Abigail Adams Greenway, one half of the DC-based duo Table for Two that provided the musical entertainment for the panel, also believes that giving the people of Afghanistan a chance to to take charge of their own lives is vital.

“I feel that it is extremely important to create an atmosphere of hope for the women and children and men living in Afghanistan,” she says, which is ultimately what she and her partner Masood Omari strive to do with their traditional Afghan music. “They must know that we, or someone, cares, and that is the beauty of these grassroots projects.”

Each rug produced by weavers for Opie’s project is unique, containing an array of traditional patterns that amount to, in Opie’s words, “art you can walk on.” The wool is hand-spun, providing work for many female spinners. Using vegetable dyes also provides agricultural jobs and protects the environment. It takes several

weeks to make even the smallest rugs, but Opie orders all sizes and then sells them to dealers so that they may furnish homes throughout North America and Europe.

“We have an opportunity—I think a responsibility—to target some of our purchases in ways that nourish our own aesthetic needs and, at the same time, support stability in vulnerable parts of the world,” he says. “These locales seem distant from us but everything on our planet is connected. No one and nothing is separate, and this is especially true regarding the impact on world affairs from events in highly unstable regions. If we do not seize opportunities to promote stability in Afghanistan, a nation which can be saved, we will pay in ways that bring us grief and help no one.”

Alex Mazzarisi is a senior studying public communication and anthropology. She is the Managing Editor of AWOL. WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

conservative writer David Horowitz and “dedicated to the defense of free societies whose moral, cultural and economic foundations are under attack by enemies both secular and religious, at home and abroad,“ according to its website.

When a conservative campus organization at the University of California, Los Angeles, invited Horowitz to give a speech back in 2011, he called Islam a “sick death cult,” and received applause for his statement. So it was unsurprising that the night the posters went up, several students contacted Abdelhamid, telling her that they felt unsafe on campus.

“They felt there was a target [on them],” she said. “They were very threatening images that [made] students legitimately scared.”

After the incident, Abdelhamid learned that this was not the first instance of derogatory posters appearing on U.S. college campuses. That same month at Virginia Tech, someone wrote, “On 11/11 we’ll kill all the Muslims,” on a wall.

“That’s when students really didn’t feel safe on campus,” she said.

But the posters themselves were not the biggest problem; it was AU’s reaction to them that frustrated Muslim students the most.

MUSLIM STUDENTS THREATENED BY STEREOTYPES

PERCEPTION INCEPTION

By Antoinette D'Addario // Illustration by Mithila Samak

In the wake of terrorist attacks around the world—from Ankara, Turkey, to Brussels, Belgium—Muslims are facing more discrimination than ever before, and Muslim students at American University are no exception. In fact, Aman Abdelhamid, president of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at AU, has even been followed home from the metro.

“Luckily, it has only happened twice,” she said.

But it wasn’t the only time she’s feared for her safety. Once, she came across an article written about her that included her address and phone number.

Abdelhamid, a sophomore from Maryland, comes from a family of Palestinian immigrants. Despite incidents of discrimination, Abdelhamid is dedicated to increasing awareness about Muslim students and the issues they face on campus.

Her work has been especially important recently after an unknown person or group of people hung hate posters around campus in November. The posters came from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Los Angeles-based organization founded by

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“In the beginning [the administration] didn’t take down the posters,” Abdelhamid said. “If the MSA went and put posters in the tunnel, they would have taken them down immediately because you’re not supposed to do that…and on top of that they had really horrible messages on them, and they didn’t do much about it. It was really upsetting.”

As reported by The Eagle after the posters appeared, Public Safety officers did not remove the poster in the tunnel because it was “crazy glued” to a traffic box that belongs to the city and they were afraid they would damage it.

Eventually, Public Safety did coordinate with the MSA to ensure Muslim students felt safe and called Abdelhamid with updates on the situation. Still, she was bothered by the fact that the posters appeared at all.

“The hard part about this is we didn’t know who it was—although it was an outside foundation, it doesn’t mean that students inside the school weren’t part of it,” she said.

Even though he did not see the posters himself, Imam Imadad-Dean Ahmad, AU’s Muslim chaplain, felt strongly about them.

“If there are people on campus that feel that way, they’re utter cowards because they haven’t come out to stand behind their trouble-making,” he said.

Ahmad believes that Muslims are persecuted for two reasons, both rooted in history. In the Middle Ages, Christians saw Muslims as a threat to their way of life, which resulted in a lot of propaganda. Later, after the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the end of the Cold War, the former hegemonic enemies needed a new threat to unite against. For that, he said, they chose Islam.

“For a long time, the Muslim society was the most tolerant one on earth,” Ahmad said. “To make that argument [that it is not], in my mind, requires deliberate distortions.”

CAMPUS LIFE According to Abdul Rashid Moten, a professor at the International Islamic University Malaysia, anti-Muslim rhetoric is not a new phenomenon. In fact, Moten said, it is centuries old; it has merely increased in intensity due to fear of the increasing number of Muslim citizens in North America and Europe. He charges these countries with “maligning Islam…as a religion of terror and extremism.”

Moten believes that the media tends to portray all Muslims as extremists, though this is not supported by statistics. According to a 2010 Gallup Poll, 89 percent of U.S. Muslims stated that the targeting and killing of civilians by individuals or small groups is never justified. Muslims had the highest negative response to this question, followed by Jews at 75 percent; Protestants and Catholics came in at 71 percent.

According to Imam Omar Ali, who leads a mosque in Indiana, terrorism is not condoned by the Quran—in fact, it is explicitly forbidden. He refers to Chapter 5, verse 32 of the Quran, which, when translated, states, “We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul...it is as if he had slain mankind entirely.

And whoever saves one...it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.”

“It’s not even a question,” Ali said. “Unjust killing is forbidden.”

According to Ali, terrorists are driven by politics and emotions, not religion.

“They’re not representative of the faith,” he said.

While the posters were the most overt display of discrimination against Muslim students at AU, prejudice is something that Azza Altiraifi, a senior, said that they face almost daily. She said she feels discriminated against “only all the time.”

Altiraifi recalls a time in a law class where a professor asked about the meaning of constitutional rights, then pointed at her and said, “You don’t have to be American to answer.” Another professor told the class that America was losing the war in Afghanistan because of Islam, calling it an oppressive religion. He told the class that women who wear headscarves are oppressed, despite the fact that Altiraifi was sitting right there, wearing her scarf.

“I walked out of that class after giving him a piece of my mind,” Altiraifi said. Unfortunately, she said that experiences like those are normal for Muslim students.

“This is a microcosm for what is happening in a broader sense in the society that we exist in, which is vehemently Islamophobic, which is vehemently racist and people are reflecting that here in their academic discourse,” she said. “And sometimes the problems that I’m seeing in the university is that, the types of things that are being said, which really just constitute pure vitriol, are being presented as though they constitute legitimate academic discourse.”

She believes this creates a learning environment which has become hostile toward minorities in general, not just Muslims.

And it’s not confined to college campuses. Abdelhamid points to the presidential primaries as a clear demonstration of hostility—most obviously Republican candidate Donald Trump and his overtly racist statements.

Abdelhamid said Trump’s power and momentum is an eye-

opener, not just for Muslims, but for all people.

In response to Trump’s calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” in December, several media organizations conducted surveys to see how many people agreed with him. YouGov, CBS, NBC/WSJ and Bloomberg Politics all found similar results: about one-third of Americans agreed with this policy and about half of republican respondents supported it.

“In my view, Trump is an entertainer, a narcissistic entertainer,” Ahmad said. “He is doing this for the attention and he is getting it, so he’s happy.”

Despite the backlash she faces, Abdelhamid is determined to help people better understand Islam.

“I think it’s a big part on the Muslim Student Association and Muslims on campus to educate people whenever they can about what’s actually right in Islam, ” she said.

For her, this means education for both Muslims and non-Muslims. Muslim students need to have resources, like the MSA, where they can ask questions to better understand their faith and better explain it to others.

“I am so open to people asking me questions,” Abdelhamid said.

“I am actually really happy when people ask me questions because I feel like that is the only way we are going to learn more about each other.”

Likewise, Ahmad encourages students to come to him when they face challenges and discrimination.

“That’s why I like having this position,” he said. “So I can be a resource for them and try to make it a tiny bit easier.”

Both feel that dialogue is ultimately the way to change hearts and minds.

“Polls show that people with extreme views against Muslims are people who don’t know any Muslims,” Ahmad said.

According to a YouGov survey conducted in December 2015, 74 percent of respondents said they did not work with a Muslim individual and 67 percent said that they do not have friends who are Muslim. Additionally, 35 percent of Americans surveyed had a very unfavorable opinion of the Islamic religion and 23 percent had a somewhat unfavorable opinion.

But when it came to the second question—how well they understand the Islamic religion—over 50 percent answered in the negative. Yet, only 36 percent were interested in learning more about Islam.

The data may be explained in part by the fact that, according to Abdelhamid, some media organizations tend to portray Muslims as violent terrorists, which is not what it truly means to be a Muslim.

“I wish people knew that Islam is derived from 'sallam,' which means peace,” she said.

Antoinette D'Addario is a sophomore studying justice, law and print journalism. She is a staff editor for AWOL.

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

IMMIGRANTS' BIGGEST BATTLE: TUITION

UNDOCUMENTED AMERICA(N)

By Kim Szarmach // Illustration by Andrea Lin

Early this summer, the Supreme Court is expected to decide on the legality of a program that could change the lives of over four million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

The policy in question is Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) plan. DAPA is an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order issued in 2012, which delays deportation and grants two-year work visas to undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as minors. To qualify, individuals must have lived in the U.S. for over five years, graduated high school or served in the military.

Such legislation did not exist when Enrique Benavides, who graduated from American University in 2015, came to the U.S. illegally in 2006.

When civil war broke out in El Salvador in the 1980s, Benavides’ uncles and eldest brother immigrated to the U.S. without documentation. His brother married a U.S. citizen, became a citizen himself and petitioned for their mother to join him in the U.S. She arrived in 2005, but after six months without Benavides and the rest of her family, her mental health began to suffer. She returned to El Salvador and sought ways to bring Benavides to the U.S. legally. Because the process would have taken four years, Benavides’ family felt they had no other option but to bring him across the border illegally. He was 14 years old.

The family hired a coyote, a person who smuggles other people, to bring Benavides through Guatemala, Mexico and Arizona to Texas, but he wasn’t confident he would get to the U.S. without being caught and deported.

“When I left, out of all my friends I only told two or three, because on that kind of trip you don’t know if you’re going to make it or not,” he said.

Once Benavides finally got to Texas, he started high school right away.

According to a fact sheet created by the Department of Justice, public schools cannot require documentation, so his legal status never caused any issues until it came time to apply to colleges.

"When I left, out of all my friends I only told two or three, because on that kind of trip you don't know if you are going to make it or not."

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While it is not illegal for colleges or universities to accept undocumented students, without a social security number it is much harder to pay steep tuition bills.

“Citizenship and immigration status

CAMPUS LIFE are not factors in AU’s evaluation of students for admission,” Kelly Alexander, director of public relations at AU, said in an email. “Undocumented students are not eligible for need-based financial aid, but can be considered for competitive merit-based awards.”

"Anyone will step up and say 'Dreamers have potential' and 'We will support them,' but they don't really do it financially."

But without that need-based aid, Benavides said that many students are on their own, left at a significant disadvantage.

“You have to work and study and use your personal savings,” he said.

“Without that, it’s just not happening at all.”

In his case, thanks to a sympathetic admissions counselor, Benavides caught a lucky break. Normally, undocumented students apply as international students, but Benavides’ counselor allowed him to apply as a U.S. citizen because he had proof he was in the process of applying for a green card. This meant he would not have to pay the additional tuition fees that international students may incur.

Benavides wanted to go to AU because he fell in love with the District when he first visited and knew it was a good school for international relations. But without federal aid, it would be impossible for him to attend.

As a result, Benavides went back to El Salvador in 2010 to apply for permanent residency in the U.S. When he returned the following year, he reapplied for financial aid. This time he qualified for federal aid and loans and was able to attend AU. While his story has a happy ending, Benavides was just one of over 1.8 million undocumented children living in the U.S. Of these children, over 60,000 graduate high school each year, but because of federal legislation and university policies, only 5 to 10 percent of them make it to college, according to the American Immigration Council, a think tank headquartered in the District.

Aside from exclusion from federal aid and higher tuition, undocumented students face other financial obstacles when applying to college. Financial literacy barriers often prevent undocumented college applicants from taking advantage of the few resources they have available, according to Martha Sanchez, a junior at AU and immigration justice activist.

She said that many undocumented students don’t fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), a form that determines students’ eligibility for financial aid, because they know they don’t qualify.

“Many high school students, when they find out they don’t qualify for federal scholarships, they just don’t fill out the FAFSA in the first place, which can deprive them of going to a private university where you can get private scholarships,” Sanchez said.

students find the resources they need to finance their education. The Center aids students in applying for scholarships specifically for immigrant students and students of certain ethnicities.

“I think that’s important because there are a lot of undocumented students that come to DC to further their education,” said James Rose, who serves as director of CIC. “They are a minority, but they’re a big minority.”

He thinks universities should be providing the same resources that CIC does, especially in the District, a common destination for immigrant and migrant students. He would also like to see college admissions officers providing clear instructions to students without documentation about applying for and funding their education.

For Sanchez, making sure that AU students and the administration are aware of the immigrant student population in the community is just as important.

“We have so many students who have fled violence in Central America and have come specifically to DC and are now going to our local high schools,” she said. “When they look to apply to AU, whether they are documented or not, there are too many barriers.”

Students at other colleges and universities have been taking action to make it easier for their undocumented classmates to finance their education. According to an article in the International Business Times, last year students at Loyola University Chicago voted to pass a referendum that would add $2.50 to their fees every semester to create a scholarship fund for students who apply to the school without citizenship. Sanchez believes AU students should follow Loyola’s lead.

“Anyone will step up and say ‘Dreamers have potential’ and ‘We will support them,’ but they don’t really do it financially,” she said, referencing the term for young undocumented immigrants seeking an education under the proposed Dream Act of 2001.

The Dream Act never passed on a federal level, but over 20 states, including California, Maryland and Illinois, have passed their own versions, providing undocumented children who grew up in the U.S. with a path to citizenship.

Benavides believes that while legislation is a step in the right direction, there’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to immigration policy. Measures like the DACA renewal fees, for example, serve as barriers keeping undocumented students from realizing their full potential in the U.S.

Though there are hundreds of scholarships available to undocumented students, especially in states like California and Texas with large immigrant populations, Benavides said that finding the right one can be tricky. When he was applying to colleges, most of the scholarships he found were limited to students planning on studying a certain topic at a certain school, and he couldn’t find any specific to what he wanted to do.

Ultimately, as he said, these students “just want to study and make a difference in their societies and families.”

The College Information Center (CIC), affiliated with the District of Columbia Public Library, is one organization helping undocumented

Kim Szarmach is a sophomore studying journalism and political science.

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"I was assaulted my junior year of high school," she said. "When I get stressed out, that comes out. Not having experienced being high before kind of triggered it. I started having a panic attack and there were like five people in the room; they all had the best intentions, but they didn’t really know what to do with a panic attack.”

At that point, Alice said she lost it.

“I just started freaking out,” she said. “I kept on saying, 'Don’t touch me’ but they took that as me being irrational and drunk and high. None of them knew I was having a panic attack, so I was just trying to curl up in the corner and one of my roommates [said] ‘If something happens to her it will be on my conscience’ and they called the transport.”

When the transport arrived, Alice cried and plead-

INVESTIGATING AU'S ALCOHOL CLIMATE

TRANSPORT TRAUMA

By Will Fowler // Illustration by Ellyse Stauffer

ed with the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) team to let her stay. She insisted she was okay; she was just feeling anxious. She said she didn’t need to go to the hospital. She clung to the bed and physically resisted leaving.

“I repeatedly told them I was fine and I didn’t need it, but they just took that as a drunk girl saying she wasn’t drunk,” Alice said. “They didn’t listen. They had told them how much I’d had to drink, so they thought I was just too [intoxicated] to make a decision for myself.”

According to a representative of the Office of Campus Life, the EMS team was just following policy.

It was late on a Thursday night when Alice, who wished to remain anonymous, went to one of the first fraternity parties of her college career. A freshman at American University, Alice hadn’t ever had much alcohol before, and she had never smoked weed. It was a night of firsts for her.

“Students are transported when their apparent use of alcohol or other drugs has resulted in their inability to take care of themselves,” the representative said in an email. “[The other necessary factor is] when their level of intoxication appears to place them at risk of injury or illness, if a medical evaluation is not been conducted.”

“I drank a lot,” she said. “I had like eight shots of vodka in a span of 45 minutes. I’d never gotten high before, so my roommate was like ‘Why don’t you try it?’”

But once she arrived at the hospital, Alice said she received no medical treatment. They didn’t pump her stomach or give her any medication for her anxiety.

After Alice left the party with several friends, she started to feel panicked and out of control. When she got back to her room, she started having flashbacks and her anxiety quickly escalated.

“The doctors didn’t give me any help or try to calm me down, they just let me ride it out by myself in a hospital room,” she said.

Alice doesn’t seem like the type of person who would get dangerously drunk. In her spare time, she likes writing and going on Tumblr. As a School of International Service student, she maintains a 3.4 GPA. During the interview in her well-kept dorm room, she straightens her hair and calmly relays the details of her night.

"I repeatedly told them I was fine and I didn't need it, but they just took that as a drunk girl saying she wasn't drunk. They didn't listen.

They had told them how much I'd had to drink, so they thought I was just too [intoxicated] to make a decision for myself."

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Starting in the fall of 2016, nights like these may be avoidable for some students. Last year, AU announced that it will be changing its alcohol policy. According to the Campus Life representa-

CAMPUS LIFE tive, the university will pilot a policy where students over the age of 21 who don’t have roommates under the age of 21 will be able to drink and possess alcohol in residence halls.

According to an article published in The Eagle, AU is one of the only area universities that abided by such strict alcohol policies.

“We learned that of all the schools, only two schools did not allow alcohol, American and Howard University, in resident halls,” Chris Moody, assistant vice president for housing and dining programs, told The Eagle. “It shows that other campuses have an open mind to a policy that becoming 21 and the ability to drink alcohol as a legal adult is part of that normalized process.”

For Tim Titus, an adjunct professor, AU alumnus and former Resident Assistant (RA), this policy is more in line with those he remembers from his time at the university.

“In the mid-80s, AU was a pretty hard-drinking establishment,” Titus said. “At night they used to roll out kegs on the Quad. Everybody could have some. It was all very open.”

Titus said the District was one of the last jurisdictions in the United States to raise its drinking age from 18 to 21 in 1986, and that AU changed its alcohol policy accordingly.

“The university made changes to change the academic reputation of the school,” he said. “As well as [for] insurance reasons.”

When Titus was an RA, students were usually only transported “if they were semi-conscious or unable to engage in a discussion.”

Now, however, Public Safety has developed different standards. According to a statement on the AU website, when called to a potential emergency situation, Public Safety officers evaluate the condition and decide whether to call the transport.

“If they determine your condition is a medical emergency, [DC Fire and EMS] will be contacted to assess you and determine whether a hospital transport is necessary,” the statement reads. “If this is this case, you will be transported by ambulance to the hospital.”

Alice believes in her case, the officers were wrong. She says she was completely conscious and capable of engaging in conversation.

Though panicked, she was capable of insisting she did not need to go to the hospital. And, despite her insistence and physical resistance, she was taken. “[Taking somebody involuntarily] is a very grey area,” said Tim Wilson, director of communications at DC Fire and EMS. “It’s on a caseby-case basis.”

Wilson said that there was no universal rule for when to take somebody who is resisting a transport. He said that EMTs use reason and compassion before force.

“Usually [they] try and convince the patient to come,” he said. “[They] say, ‘Hey, you’re not okay, you need to come with us.’”

Wilson added that EMTs do not generally perform any specific tests to determine somebody’s risk of lethal intoxication, but that they do make basic assessments of the patient’s health.

“We of course take their vitals, make sure they’re stable," Wilson said. "And if we think there is a threat to the patient’s life, we trans-

port them immediately.”

Sometimes, EMS will take the advice of others on scene, Public Safety included. But the final call, according to Wilson, is that of the EMT or paramedic.

“Ultimately, what we look at is what is the best way to care for a patient,” he said.

If a patient is having an panic attack, it’s no different.

“We try and make sure that they’re on the path to recover,” Wilson said. “We try to give them adequate treatment based on the situation... it’s the same if they’re having a panic attack.”

The LD50 for alcohol (the dose necessary to kill 50 percent of those who imbibe it) is about 13 shots taken in one hour, according to Compound Interest, a non-profit science education website. According to Alice’s estimation, she drank less than two thirds of this dose. She was not vomiting. She believes the fact that doctors did not pump her stomach or give her medication upon her arrival at the hospital confirms this. Instead, she received a $600 bill for her ambulance ride and hospital stay, which she has yet to pay off.

Still, it’s true that drinking alcohol can have fatal consequences.

According to a report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, roughly 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die as a result of drinking each year. Over 90,000 are sexually assaulted and nearly 600,000 are injured in relation to alcohol. So far in the current academic year, 44 AU students have been transported for reasons related to alcohol; in the previous year, that number was 52, according to the representative of Campus Life.

Alice believes she wasn’t at risk of injury or illness.

“I don’t know who exactly determined it to be a medical emergency,” she said. “The other people said I was...intoxicated, but I was perfectly coherent.”

It may be too late to change her situation. At the end of the day, she was underage and she was drinking. AU’s policy toward drinking under 21 will not change. However, the new policy may encourage a drinking culture where students are better at assessing risk and making good decisions without fear of consequences.

“Changes [in campus age demographics] prompted the pilot policy,” the Campus Life representative said. “We are committed to encouraging the responsible consumption of alcohol for those who choose to drink and are of legal drinking age. Our aim is always to influence students toward responsible conduct.”

Alice, however, remains skeptical.

“I don’t think [the new policy] would change anything” she said.

“It’s not like the policy stopped people from drinking in their dorms anyway.”

University Communications and Public Safety did not respond to ongoing requests for comment in time for print.

Will Fowler is a freshman studying journalism.

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AMERICAN WAY LIFE MAGAZINE AMERICAN WAY OFOF LIFE MAGAZINE

PHOTO ESSAY:

DIGEST THIS. Photos by Olivia Donohue Words by Jess Anderson In 2014, 48.1 million people in the United States lived in a food-insecure household, meaning they didn’t know where or when their next meal would be. According to data from the United States Department of Agriculture, these individuals either didn’t have the funds or couldn’t access sufficient nutritious food to keep themselves and their families healthy and happy.

Juxtaposing shots of the products sold in three different common food markets—the organic, expensive Whole Foods, the cheaper Safeway and the nationwide convenience store 7-11—serves to draw attention to this nationwide food crisis. The differences among these three food stores, located less than a 30 minute walk away from each other, is symbolic of the ever-growing difference between the classes in the U.S.

A full meal at the Tenleytown 7-11 comes in the microwaveable variety.

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EXTINCT & EMERGING

The recommended daily amount of fruit is one to two cups; for vegetables, it’s two to three. Currently, less than 10 percent of Americans meet that goal.

Fresh fruit from Whole Foods in Tenleytown.

Alternatively, the offerings from 7-11 are pretty slim.

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AMERICAN MAGAZINE AMERICAN WAYWAY OF OF LIFELIFE MAGAZINE

Processed meat at 7-11.

A 2013 cross-generational survey indicated that 77 percent of shoppers purchased groceries from a non-grocer, and 96 percent planned to in the coming year—82 percent of which were individuals with children.

7-11 ranked 7 out of 20 for favored non-traditional food market; CVS Pharmacy came in 4th.

Ready-made meals at Safeway in Tenleytown.

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Fresh meat at Whole Foods.

According to the Bloomberg School for Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, most of the meat consumed in the U.S. is red meat, which may lead to serious health complications. Nearly 25 percent is processed meat, which often contain fillers, additives and a high sodium content. Because farm subsidies (particularly for corn, the basis of many sweeteners and fillers) increase the output of processed food, less healthy options also tend to be cheaper.

Olivia Donohue is a freshman studying print journalism.

AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

ALEXANDER VAN LOON/FLICKR

EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON FOOD SECURITY

GROWING SCARCE

By Thomas Pool // Infographic by Gwynn Pollard

As the effects of climate change grow more pronounced, its threat to food production grows as well. All over the world, global warming is significantly damaging crops. In the United States, whether it's a drought in California, flooding in Iowa or the acidification of ocean fisheries, some experts warn that Americans will also see the effects of global warming in gardens, farms and grocery stores.

perfect for it. It’s getting too hot. The perfect area for growing those grapes is moving north, and I think that’s happening with a lot of different crops.”

One of the most significant effects climate change will have on the U.S. is a drastic shift in where food is grown and when, or if, it will be available in the grocery aisle.

A press release from the California Farm Water Coalition estimates that the economic losses from the climate change related to drought will double from $1.7 billion to $3.56 billion this year, and that unemployment in hard-hit valley communities will to rise above 40 percent.

“If temperature and rainfall patterns change, areas that were suitable for growing a particular crop might no longer be suitable,” said Karen Knee, an assistant professor of envionmental science at American University. “The Napa and Sonoma areas, the wine and grape growing areas of California, are the perfect place to grow those grapes, but they’re becoming less and less

The geographic shift in where crops can grow in the U.S. will bring many new challenges to farmers across the country.

Some of them may even have to change the crops they grow or move to new regions where those crops can grow.

A United Nations report cited by Suzanne Goldenberg in The Guardian states that the global changes in rainfall patterns and temperature will cause the average price of food to rise up to 84 percent by 2050. The same report also found that in the most extreme scenarios, heat and water stress could decrease crop yields by 25 percent. This spells bad news for a planet with an evergrowing population, and even worse news for nations with significant levels of poverty and the highest population growth rates.

One of the most significant effects climate change will have on the U.S. is a drastic shift in where food is grown and when, or if, it will be available in the grocery store.

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15

Food Insecurity Rate Grain Production (Trend) Unemployment Rate

450 430 410

13

390 11

370 350

9 330 7

310 290

5 270 3

Annual U.S. Grain Production (Million Metric Tons)

Year Source: The Guardian; USDA ERS 1996-2013; NASS 1997-2013; USBLS 2014

According to contemporary U.S. food insecurity rates and annual grain production, food insecurity is not necessarily determined by food production alone.

“We do not anticipate [climate change to affect] domestic food security,” said Margaret Walsh of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). “The driver of domestic food insecurity isn’t agricultural production…it’s a socio-economic issue.”

According to a report that Walsh coauthored, the amount of food-insecure Americans is growing despite increasing domestic grain yields. And with food prices increasing over the next 35 years, this means that America’s most food insecure, the working class, will be the most at risk.

“We do not have enough information to say that climate change is a driver of food insecurity at this time,” Walsh said.

“You could make the case that it is a driver at the community level where changes in climate are creating socio-economic changes that mean that people can’t afford food anymore.

But at the national level, it doesn’t appear to be the case because there are such widespread social safety nets in place.”

According to the USDA, there are 48.1 million people living in food insecure households across the U.S., with single women with children, African-American households and lowincome families most at risk for food insecurity. The effects climate change will have on these communities will create a greater stress on their food supply, increase their cost of living and lower their quality of life.

“In 2011 it was sopping wet in the Midwest and it went on really long into the spring,” Walsh said. “There weren’t going to be enough growing days for them to have a crop. In Iowa it finally got dry enough for them to plant, and they planted all of Iowa within something like 10 days. And the way they did

that was by using giant equipment.

Giant equipment isn’t an option if you have a small farm.”

The risk climate change poses to small farmers and local farmers markets seems to be growing. But not everyone seems to be as worried as Walsh about small farmers.

“I think they ought to change the name of weather to ‘maybe,’” said Dan Donahue, the proprietor of the farmers market that frequents AU’s campus on Wednesdays. Donahue says that none of the small farms he does business with are worried about the effects of climate change.

13 20

11 20

09 20

07 20

20

05

03 20

01 20

99 19

19

19

97

250

95

U.S. Food Insecurity Rate and Unemployment Rate (%)

AROUND TOWN

“About 30 years ago…what we told them is that they should put in irrigation systems,” Donahue said of the small farmers he works with.

“Some of them did and some of them didn’t, the ones that did prospered almost immediately from it, and the ones who didn’t…had to put them in

a little later on.”

Donahue believes that weather is cyclical. Some years you lose a crop, some years the crops do well, but the best plan for farmers is to keep some “rainy day money” to compensate for years with a bad harvest.

On the California drought, and whether or not it will hurt small farmers, Donahue said that “bigger [farmers] are having problems [in California] too,” and disagrees with Walsh that the small farmers will have it worse in the future than large agro-businesses.

“When you pile on problems in agriculture, it’s not just one thing,” Donahue said. “You’re building a pyramid of problems.”

While the United States is not going to be facing a biblical famine anytime in the foreseeable future, the damage global warming will do to the global food production system will hurt those who are already the most at risk for starvation and food insecurity across the world.

“I think that [food insecurity in America] has nothing to do with food availability or climate change,” Knee said. “It is entirely a result of the income inequality in our country.”

But she acknowledges that a warmer planet may also have an effect on American food security.

“There are some low-income Americans whose lives will be made much worse by climate change,” Knee said.

Thomas Pool is a sophomore studying literature and communication.

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS:

EDUCATION IN DC

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Adult Illiteracy Rates, by Ward ADULT ILLITERACY RATE, BY WARD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS TESTING PROFICIENT OR ADVANCED ON DCCAS, SPRING 2009

Reading Math

* DCCAS - DC Comprehensive Assessment System test Source: Center for Community Engagement and Service, D.C. Office of Planning.

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AROUND TOWN

A TEACHER WITH TENACITY

EXPLAINING THE ABCS IN DC

By Jess Anderson

Sometimes, students come to Ann Lamers’ class without shoes.

For the record, she teaches in the District of Columbia— the capital of the United States of America, the country that Forbes ranked as the wealthiest by total individual wealth in 2015. Yet, time after time, kids straggle in after traversing crime-riddled neighborhoods in nothing but their socks.

“They would come to school without shoes,” Lamers says, and the matter-of-fact way she says it makes the situation seem even more incredible. “Because parents like to not make sure that they have X, Y and Z, but man, when the newest shoes come out, our kids always have them. They send them to school with the expensive electronics, the expensive shoes, and they get their shoes taken.”

Photo courtesy of Ann Lamers

Moten Elementary School, where Lamers is a fourth grade teacher, is a “priority” school, meaning it is among the lowestperforming five percent. Located in the southeast quadrant of the city, it has an enrollment of little more than 300 students in preschool through fifth grade; nearly 99 percent of students are black, and 1 percent are Asian. All qualify for free or reduced lunch.

“Our kids come with large deficiencies in their education because their parents did not do those little steps prior to them even starting school,” Lamers said. “They didn’t work with numbers and their ABCs. One of my fourth graders just learned how to spell her last name correctly and it’s only three letters.”

And Moten isn’t the only one. Out of 111 schools districtwide, there are 25 priority schools, and an additional 20 categorized as “focus schools”—schools with low graduation rates or large performance gaps between subgroups of students.

Ann Lamers teaches her fourth grade students.

While the city’s graduation rate has significantly improved over the past few years, the 2015 rate for was still only about 64 percent.

Lamers says that part of the struggle comes from lack of resources—a report from the National Center for Education Statistics determined that about 90 percent of the District's school budget came from local sources, which include property taxes. According to UrbanTurf, an organization of journalists that focus on the real estate beat, homes in the northwestern quadrant of the city, particularly those situated near the American University campus, can cost from $750,000 to more than $1 million, meaning that a homeowner might pay up to $8,500 a year in taxes, even with the District’s relatively low tax rate.

"One of my fourth graders just learned how to spell her name correctly and it's only three letters."

In contrast, many residents in certain neighborhoods in Southeast and Southwest live in low-income—Section 8— housing. Ninety-six percent of people taking advantage of the Section 8 program identify as a minority, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and statistics from WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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Neighborhood Info DC, a project of the Urban Institute that compiles data from the most recent census, indicate that the bulk of the District’s minority population lives outside of the more affluent Northwest.

Additionally, the data show that 76 percent of these households are female-headed, and that birth rates among teen mothers south of the Anacostia river is significantly higher, at 18 percent, compared to nearly zero in the wards comprising Northwest.

“I have parents who call me for the most ridiculous things because they themselves are children,” Lamers says, adding that teachers often end up forming deeper bonds with students, standing for the parents that may be absent from their lives.

“You don’t separate being their social worker, their mom, their aunt, the one constant adult in their life,” she says.

Over seven years of teaching, there have been five students in particular that she’s become especially close with; she calls them her adopted kids. They all have her real phone number, and text her if they need anything—from school supplies to a friendly face at their college graduation ceremony. *** Lamers didn’t plan on becoming an educator.

“I never, never wanted to be a teacher,” she says. “I was adamant.”

In fact, she thought she might diverge from her sociology degree and go into brokerage, stocks, even be an engineer like her father. But even before graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Lamers, who was born in South Korea, began to realize that her hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, population 73,000, was smaller—and whiter— than she thought.

In the mid-seventies to early nineties, a stream of Hmong refugees from Laos sought asylum in the U.S. During the conflict in Vietnam, many had fought against North Vietnam as guerilla soldiers, which made them targets when American forces left the region. Sponsored by religious organizations and attracted by the farmlands of the Midwest, many settled in Wisconsin.

Before the Hmong arrived, race was never an issue for Lamers.

“I wasn’t white, I wasn’t Asian, I was just Ann,” she says.

But after they came, Lamers felt that many people, afraid of the gangs that some Hmong formed, began to lump all people with Asian heritage into the same category.

A desire for diversity and adventure pushed her out of Wisconsin, and she eventually settled in the District. She was looking for social service positions, but that’s not what Tanisha Williams-Minor, then-principal of Washington Metropolitan High School, had in mind when she hired her in 2009.

“Really, the turning point for wanting to become a teacher was when I met Tanisha Williams-Minor,” Lamers says. “I’m

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going to say it all the time. She’s the reason I’m a teacher. She’s also the reason that I’m an effective teacher.”

Williams-Minor is known within education circles for her debut in a PBS documentary that followed the trials and triumphs of D.C. Met, as it is colloquially known, over the course of a year. Once, D.C. Met had been an institution focused on providing internships and real-world experiences. However, just a few years after it opened its doors, its funding ran out and the school became a refuge for students facing challenges ranging from substance abuse to mental illness to homelessness.

At DC Met, Lamers worked as an administrative assistant, but moved to teaching when Williams-Minor needed to fill an opening.

“She was really struggling to find a French teacher, so I taught French I,” Lamers says. Despite a lack of formal education in the subject, she drew on her knowledge from eight years studying it in school, and managed to teach her kids the basics.

“She had a good rapport with her students,” recalls Yirusha Seshet Malkiel, who grew close to Lamers at DC Met, forming an almost mother-daughter bond. “She actually still has relationships with some of the students she taught at Met— they’re in college now.”

But after a short time, when Lamers graduated Howard University with a master’s degree, she graduated DC Met as well— her next placement was at John Phillip Sousa Middle School in Southeast, just a block away from 37th Street, notorious for drugs and violence.

“In the past it had been horrible,” Lamers says. “One of the worst neighborhoods and blocks in the area, but with the help of the Nationals Baseball Academy that’s there right now and just the revamping of that area, it’s gotten a little better.”

It’s by no means ideal. Just a little over a year ago, a 16-yearold boy was shot and killed not far from Sousa; up until that point, shootings had occurred there with startling regularity: a young teenager was wounded in the legs in 2013, a man killed in 2012 and three people dead within two months back in 2009, according to the Washington Post. *** Like Sousa, the neighborhood around Moten faces challenges, and so going above and beyond often separates teachers in priority schools from those who teach in wealthier ones.

“I got into the field because there was something I could provide, and part of it is, yeah, as a teacher, but part of it was that I was genuinely going to care about the kids that I was servicing,” Lamers says. “And not everyone does that.”

But often, teachers just get burnt out. According to the Shanker Institute, the District of Columbia Public School system lost 25 percent of its teachers after the 2012 school year, compared to a national average of 16 percent.

Part of it comes down to a lack of resources, which some

AROUND TOWN

"Not every child gets a hug from me every day, because they don't need it. They have parents.

And I'm not saying that every child in Southeast has a single parent who's not there for them, but a lot of them do. And a lot of them need hugs." may interpret as a lack of support.

“At my old school, I had to buy my own paper," she says.

"You got two cases a year…[a]nd that’s because my principal was very adamant about using that money toward things for the kids, toward resources. It wasn’t to screw over the teachers—other teachers took it personally.”

Still, working within the public school system does take a toll.

“There’s a lot of days, and I’m going to be honest, where I feel like I can’t do this anymore,” says Amber Alston, who has been working alongside Lamers for the past year.

The two often text, call or catch up in the spare moments before or after class. Lamers focuses on math and science, while Alston works with the fourth graders on reading and social studies.

“She’s always willing to help,” Alston says of her teammate. “She’s one of the most helpful people I know.”

And sometimes, help is sorely needed. Alston’s first job out of college was a year at a school in North Carolina, where she taught a very different group of kids. At her old school, she never had a child fall to the floor screaming or throw furniture. She never had a child in fourth grade reading at a kindergarten level.

Lamers also has her ups and downs and kids who act out. But she has a pretty effective strategy for dealing with “problem students.”

“You love them more,” she says, with genuine warmth.

“And it’s basics. They all want to learn. None of the kids want to be the dumb kid.”

Her style contains tenents of “broken windows theory,” a favorite example from her undergraduate days studying criminology, that focuses on reducing petty crime as a way to decrease the rate of major crime. The same principle applies to teaching.

“Their stomach hurts, because they haven’t eaten,” she says. “I have saltines in my classroom—I give them five saltines.” She mimicks a conversation with a child. “‘It’s just because you didn’t eat, or what you did eat didn’t agree with you, because hot Cheetos are not a breakfast food.’”

Then, more seriously, “If they have a headache, I let them sleep it off for five minutes in the back of the room…I take care of all those little things so my kids can focus on the big things.” *** Eventually, the shoe theft got so bad that Lamers and her fellow teachers began having conversations with students, beseeching them to wear grungy shoes to school and then swap them for the expensive ones when they arrived.

“They want their children to have nice things,” she says of the parents. “The problem is, they forget the neighborhoods they’re in. So they get a bonus check here and there or whatever and they just want their child to have something.”

And so Lamers offers her kids strategies to avoid getting their possessions stolen. She checks up on them if they have been absent, she cajoles them into attending class with a big luncheon each month. She washes their uniforms and gives them hugs when they ask. Somewhere along the line, she becomes that one constant adult in their lives: the one that they see every day, the one that they can always find, the one that doesn’t let them down.

“I don’t think my kids need someone like me, necessarily,” she says. “I want to be that person for them, I’ve chosen to be that type of person for them. They’re not asking for that; I just think they benefit from it. Not every child gets a hug from me every day, because they don’t need it. They have parents. And I’m not saying every child in Southeast has a single parent who’s not there for them, but a lot of them do. And a lot of them need hugs.”

And sometimes she does too.

“I think sometimes the needs of my kids are maybe needs that I also have, because I don’t have my family here,” she says. “So I think it’s an equal balance.”

Roughly 19 percent of the teachers who leave DCPS leave the teaching profession for good. They are tired, they are frustrated, they want something different. Yet in some ways, Lamers believes she is living the dream.

“There is never a bad day,” she says. “There just isn’t, because there’s always going to be that one kid that just wants to love you. At least one.”

Jess Anderson is a senior studying journalism and CLEG.

WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

associated with the Baltimore-Washington Methodist Conference, inherited a dying church. When she took over Douglas Memorial in 2005, the building was deteriorating and only 19 people belonged to the church, she explained.

It was also when she began to see changes in the H Street area.

“There were very few blacks left,” Fleming observed. “Gentrification had entered Washington, DC.” United States Census Bureau data for 2000 indicate that African Americans made up about 92 percent of the H Street population and whites around four percent. By 2010, the white population increased more than sevenfold to about 30 percent.

“That’s why I had to go find a Caucasian pastor,” Fleming said.

Enter Kevin Lum, a young, white professional.

He and his wife, Charla, had been searching for a place to “plant” a church “that calls people to both Jesus and justice,” explained Lum. They felt called to H Street, where Lum saw the two Districts—young professionals and long-time residents— come together.

TWO CHURCHES, ONE LOVE

BRIDGING THE DIVINE

Words and photos by D. Ashley Campbell

“H Street seemed to be one of the spaces where those two cities really met,” Lum said. “And part of what we believe to be the church is to look like and to reflect the Kingdom of God. And that’s to reflect the full range of diversity.”

“THEY SEE US WORKING AS A TEAM” Gospel music echoes from a street stage.

Smells of barbecue waft through the air.

People raise their hands in praise, dance and cheer in response. On a hot Saturday in September, a community celebrates at the H Street Festival in the District of Columbia.

On Sunday, that community divides.

African American Methodists attend morning services at Douglas Memorial Methodist Church. In the evening, The Table Church, a predominantly white congregation, gathers for worship in the same building.

Looks can be deceiving, though.

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The Rev. Helen Fleming and Pastor Kevin Lum describe themselves as “two churches with one mission.” At the intersection of 11th and H Street, they formed a community partnership that works to bridge racial and cultural differences.

A CHANGING NEIGHBORHOOD In 2013, Fleming and Lum formed the Douglas Worship Center, an umbrella organization for the various ministries in the Douglas Memorial Church building. The story of their partnership can only be described as fortuitous.

Fleming, an African American minister

Lum said he did his best to honor the years of ministry Fleming and other African American spiritual leaders had done in the neighborhood.

Angela Kissel, director of community engagement for The Table Church, said that there was an emphasis on recognizing the changes the church would bring to the area.

“We didn’t want to walk in and be that young hippie church,” she said. “We wanted to learn from the community,” That is exactly what happened. The Table Church partnered with Douglas Memo-

AROUND TOWN

rial’s on-going community projects, such as the neighborhood food pantry. Two Saturdays a month members of The Table and Douglas Memorial work together to run the pantry out of the building at 11th and H. In the first six months of 2015, the pantry served 1,100 families, according to Lum. “They see us working as a team in the neighborhood,” Fleming said.

Joint efforts such as the food pantry made it easier for The Table Church's congregation to become part of the community.

“The partnership with Douglas gave us respect and credibility in the neighborhood,” Lum said.

“BEGINNING WITH RELATIONSHIPS” Although a lot has changed on H Street, some things have remained the same.

“Being realistic, people still like to be among their own,” Fleming said.

Her congregation only has 45 to 50 people, according to her estimate, and two or three of those members are white.

Lum’s congregation, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly white. He estimates that 70 percent of the H Street meeting of The Table Church is white.

“People often start with wanting a diverse worship service, which is what we want as well, but we find that we get there

Rev. Helen Fleming speaks with members of the community. faster and more authentically by beginning with relationships,” Lum said.

Fleming echoed Lum’s sentiment. She explained that part of partnering with The Table Church is learning how to have relationships with people of a different culture.

Fleming said that communication was an issue at the beginning of the partnership, but that it has gotten better. She believes that it’s important to “embrace the different cultures” and learn how to share.

“You need to be considerate of other’s ways,” Fleming said. “So each group has to give. It’s a give and take.”

Fleming smiled as she recounted one example of cultural differences. She explained that some African American members of her congregation felt the whites were rude because they wouldn’t talk to others as they entered church. Fleming had to explain that in the African American church “you got to hug people” and talk to them.

“That’s just what we do,” she said.

D. Ashley Campbell is a graduate student studying journalism.

NEWSWIRE

$ Y

ou have to go to college to get a job. But first you need a job (or three) to pay for college. Tuition at universities across the country has risen exponentially in the past half century. While some believe the rising tuition is due to decreased government funding, it has more to do with expanding universities. In fact, the federal Pell Program has grown to $34.3 billion per year, and some states put as much as $81 billion into state universities each year. The real problem for universities comes from a growing pool of administrators. According to data from the Department of Education, administrative positions at higher education institutions grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009. Another analysis performed by a professor at California Polytechnic University found that while the total number of full-time faculty members in the California State University system grew by only about 400 people between 1975 and 2008, the number of administrators grew by nearly 9,000. Another reason tuition is soaring has to do with universities physically expanding in order to compete with one another. In order to attract more students, universities need more housing for students to live in and buildings to educate them in. Additionally, the buildings must have attractive veneers and amenities. So next year when your bill is a couple thousand dollars larger, at least you’ll know why. —Antoinette D'Addario

WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE MAGAZINE

THE NEW AMERICAN POET

KYLE DARGAN

By Pamela Huber

Photo courtesy of Kyle Dargan

Kyle Dargan is a published poet, an associate professor of literature and creative writing and the director of the creative writing program at American University. AWOL sat down with him to discuss how poetry can challenge American norms, bring color to a community and amplify the voices of unheard DC youth.

of writing, I just do that out of a wholly personal drive. I’m never doing it thinking, “Oh, I’m setting myself up to benefit some way professionally or financially from this.” I also think it’s kind of foolish for a poet to think that way anyway. Nowadays, novelists aren’t making a living off of writing novels.

So if that’s the case, as a poet, which has never been very commercially viable genre in this country—at least not for many people, maybe for a select few—I don’t think you can enter it thinking that you’re going to make that

You’re not only an AU professor, but you’re an accomplished published poet.

What would you say your own poetry tends to focus on?

kind of life.

Right now, the writing is focusing a lot on the concept of America, and something I’m thinking about—functional disillusionment. It may be something of a Millennial attitude. And I call it functional disillusionment in the sense that you express that you really don’t believe that the way things are currently set up is working for the majority of people. And you don’t say that to elicit pity, or to be emotional, but what you’re saying is, “I don’t have faith in this.” I think that gets people to respond in a stronger way rather than criticism or whining, not that those aren’t valid in their own way.

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So, you’re heavily involved in the DC literary scene. Is there a strong sense of community among DC writers or artists?

But I think that there’s a certain impulse that comes with knowing that someone has lost faith in you that may spur you to try to do something different. And I feel that there are many people, particularly young people, in the country right now who feel they don’t have a reason to believe that the system has their future and their best interests in mind. I don’t think there’s

I think everyone here knows that poetry will never have top billing in the city. Literature will never have top billing in the city. You’re always competing with government. So in that way, it’s sort of a nice ego check. If you’re here as a writer, you can never think too highly of yourself because you know that C-SPAN is always going to trump whatever you’re doing. And that’s fine. You don’t write to compete with the speaker of the house or the president. You write to provide color and texture to a world which, in many ways in DC, is very surface. The machinations are very surface. Most people don’t know what life on the ground in DC is like. I think sometimes that’s true for even AU students who don’t make it away from this part of town very much. So I think that’s what a lot of people here are trying to do: give a sense of just what it’s like to be a human being in Washington, DC, as op-

any way you can really believe that as a young person right now.

posed to just someone who feeds the government and allows it to function.

What made you decide that you wanted to pursue poetry in your professional life?

Can you tell me about your current work with young writers in Eastern DC through Writopia and 826DC?

I don’t consider poetry a profession. It’s a passion, an obsession, not a profession. I teach—that’s my profession, that’s my job. What I do in terms

Writopia Labs is a great organization. They work with youth writers and they partner with Scholastic to run the Art & Writing Awards every year.

They also now do the vetting for the National Student Poets Program, which

AROUND TOWN I worked on with the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities. I was working with them reviewing submissions a few years ago and I noticed that these kids were doing great writing, but so few of the submissions, and particularly the really good ones, were from DC, and, in particular, Eastern DC. I went to give a keynote at the awards ceremony, and I noticed that when all of the kids were coming up, it was the same thing. It was mostly kids from Virginia and maybe certain select DC schools that you would expect. I said to myself, “What could you do to get more young writers from southeast DC?” And there isn’t an issue of not having enough resources going into the school, because you have people like Writopia, 826DC, Shout Mouse. But I think sometimes people need a little additional incentive.

So I started the Edward P. Jones scholarship for young writers in Ward 7 and Ward 8 to give them something to aspire towards, to say, “I want to win that thing,” which of course isn’t the reason for art, but sometimes it’s a good reason to start. The main thing is that these kids come on stage at the award ceremony and they get their own award, they get their own recognition, sometimes their friends and family are there, and the hope is

equal access to their humanity. Art reminds you of the humanity you’re trying to enable; otherwise people just become numbers and statistics and social security sequences. I think art reminds you of the face. And it’s good to think we should have someone in the White House who understands and recognizes that people have faces.

You’re currently developing an intergenerational art initiative. I was wondering if you could tell me more about it?

I’m big on institutional knowledge. I think part of the point of humanity and how we record ourselves is that you don’t have to start from zero every generation and learn everything over; we build on our mistakes. So I want to do something that encourages intergenerational dialogue.

The idea would be to get at least three different generations represented by people in a room. Let them have an open conversation about what their lives are like and have them respond to each other and record all of that.

And then have an artist make a piece of art that responds to and incorporates some of the different themes that come up in the conversation. I

that inspiration and ambition bleeds out through the community gradually.

That’s just the hope to let more kids on that side of town know that we’re interested in your voices, we’re interested in what you want to say, and we’re here to support and recognize you for that if you want to give it a shot.

would like it to take on whatever medium the artist is willing to bring to the project and just be willing to showcase this stuff in one place, and you have all these different intergenerational conversations represented by all these

I tend to have more direct interaction with students through 826DC, because they do a lot of student publishing projects. For many of them, it’s the first time they’ve ever had anything published. So it’s sort of the same idea of an incentive. You can say, “I get to be a published author” at 16, 17, 18. It’s all geared towards modeling and encouraging students to express themselves.

While you’re teaching and doing all these projects, you’re also the founder and editor of Post No Ills Magazine.

I think sometimes, what often happens is you hear someone say, “I want to be a voice for the voiceless.” No one’s voiceless. It’s just that some people have more opportunity to have their voice amplified and their words disseminated than others. Rather than going in and saying, “I need to speak for these people”— no you don’t — you just need to enable them and give them opportunities to do that themselves. So that’s what I want to do for kids on that side of town. I also think that people just assume that they know what they’re about. And you really don’t. And you read some of those narratives and you see some of those poems and you know what those kids are dealing with. It just gives you a completely different perspective on what it’s like to be a young person in Eastern, Southeast DC, and what they may need. I think too often, it’s a top-down conversation.

You mentioned before the National Student Poets Program, which is a part of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. This helps bring students into the White House to share their poetry?

The National Student Poets do have an opportunity to come and read at the White House and meet Michelle Obama. And it’s very life-changing in ways I couldn’t imagine, meeting the first lady as a [teenage] poet. The goal is really to have these kids be ambassadors for poetry. [They] can model for [their peers] the importance of poetry and the power of poetry and the power of writing.

Why do you think it’s important for the President and for our government to encourage the arts and humanities?

Important? I don’t know. I think it’s nice to have a president and a first lady who appreciate the arts because the arts bring us back to our humanity.

And I think that’s what the government is about, it’s allowing people to have

different pieces of artwork.

Post No Ills is at least around 10 years old now. Back when I started, there was a palpable decline in the amount of book reviewing in newspapers, which is generally the place where you would go to find book criticism. It presents a problem because there are people that don’t know where to start with literature—not everyone is an English major. Some people actually do want to read, but they don’t know where to start. So I started Post No Ills. It’s an online magazine, but my focus from the beginning is always just criticisms and interviews. We’re all about providing context for all this new writing that’s being produced.

How has living in DC and immersing yourself in this literary scene affected your work and how you view the arts in general?

I think a lot of people take the arts for granted in DC because so much of it is funded by the government. So if you live in the District or if you live in the area, I think your perception of worth may be skewed a bit because you have all this access to all this wonderful art for which you never actually have to see yourself exchange money.

I think there’s a space for a lot more subversive art. The punk scene in the ‘70s and ‘80s, a lot of that started in DC, which most people think is a straight-laced white-collar town. But there’s a lot that happens beneath that government veneer.

I’ve grown so much here as an artist just because of stuff I would’ve never expected to come in contact with. I partnered with organizations I would’ve never known or heard of if they hadn’t reached out to me, and I think that’s just one of the advantages of so much going on beneath the surface. If you’re willing, you can grow a lot.

Pamela Huber is a senior studying literature, creative writing and biology. She is the co-Editor-in-Chief of AWOL. WWW.AWOLAU.ORG » SPRING 2016

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